H! I loved that column so much and laughed all the way through it – valid comments!!

When I got down to almost the end and read this “the reality that people are ignorant and lazy” and I thought that is exactly how trump got into the WH. And it just got even more connected to trump when I read “has put everyone in a position where the knee-jerk reaction to anything he *says* is laughter”. Then the perfect ending to my trump analogy “The quickest way to make people not take you seriously is to make it clear that you take yourself far too seriously”.

btw, the top two photos…does he actually lift that any further up or is that about as far as he goes?

I enjoy Taleb’s writings and appreciate his genius. But you put your finger on the thing that most jars—his self importance. And lack of that overweening sense of self importance is one of the most endearing features of your articles.

Although I follow H and get a good bit of entertainment, information and enjoyment, I frequently find him a hard pill to swallow …

… I’ve seen enough of H’s ‘counter punches’ to comments here and on Seeking Alpha to be quite disabused of your quaint notion H lacks a sense of self importance …

… okay … so *maybe* debatable whether it is “overweening” … he definitely likes to come across as plain-spoken with liberal use of expletives and a sometimes self-deprecating style … maybe borderline overweening …

Why are you giving this publicity wh..e and financial failure a forum? He loves to be mentioned, regardless of whether you call his bull…t and arrogance (plus his wanton ignorance of decades of work on foundations of probability, robust statistics, … Ask him whether he’s ever read or heard of de Finetti, Kyburg, Savage, Dempster, Choquet, Dubins, ….)

He’s made a name for himself out of Statistics 101 (rare events can happen. Oh really? Thanks). They should put him and Trump in the same room so that they can decide whose hands are bigger. They can keep the results to themselves.